Think Harder

Exercise daily in God—no spiritual flabbiness, please! Workouts in the gymnasium are useful, but a disciplined life in God is far more so, making you fit both today and forever. (1 Timothy 4:7-8, The Message) Dig Deeper: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

All training is painful and frustrating on the way to skills that later become second nature and lead to greater joy. The person who will not embrace the pain and frustration will remain at lower levels of achievement and joy.

[Consider, for example,] learning to drive a car, piano playing, fly casting, throwing a ball, and learning a foreign language. At one point these tasks were all difficult and awkward. Learning the skill and practicing is never fun. The joy is on the other side of the work.

So it is with reading the Bible. The greater riches are for those who will work hard to understand all that is really there. There are hundreds of connections and meanings and implications in the Bible that do not leap off the page at first reading—at least not for me. I have to slow down and start asking questions about the words and the connections. That is, thinking has to become intentional.

There comes a point when we choose to be intentional about our thinking, so that we grow in what we see and understand. If we don't choose to think harder, we will settle for an adolescent level of understanding the rest of our lives.

—John Piper in Think